There is a common saying and feeling in the Speech Therapy world: I just need to make it through until Summer. It is often heard and seen, especially once the second part of the year and Spring Break rolls around. This is usually due to the “IEP season”, where you are having to not only complete all the IEPs for your huge caseload, but also attend and hold the meetings, as well as provide therapy for your kiddos. It is also progress report time, again, and time to wrap things up for the end of the year. If there was any small glimmer of stress earlier in the year that you were able to push aside, this is the time of year it will ooze out and saturate your day.

It is not a saying that I particularly care for, since it is seems more hopeless than hopeful, but it was one I found myself repeating over and over again in the last few months of the school year.

When we are careful with our time and are in balance with what we really need from our work (setting, schedule, types of therapy, etc), we are able to find more joy within our days and sessions, in stead of just feeling stressed and burn out. But when we drift away from this, take on too much, or end up in a job setting that doesn’t really match our needs and energy levels, we can start to feel incredibly stressed and overwhelmed. We might do a great job of hiding it or pushing it aside, but eventually, when things schedules start to get more demanding, this stress will come back full force.

It hit me big time this year as I took on much more than I had intended and left little room to work on big projects and ideas that I felt the SLP world really needed. I was constantly dropping the ball on projects and deadlines, connecting with people and then not following through, disappearing from social media groups and feeling overall flaky and scattered.

Here is a little mental picture of my day-to-day schedule at the end of the school year:

• Tuesday-Thursday work 3 hours before lunch and 3 hours after, starting at 9am and ending at 4pm.
• Friday: 2-3 hours of therapy in the morning and evals in the afternoon
• Walking the dogs and making lunch from 12-1pm

Sounds pretty dreamy, right? It was a great schedule, but not the schedule I had in tended and not a very accurate picture of my day.

So why was I feeling so incredibly stressed out each and every day? Why was I sometimes feeling panicked? Where was this overwhelm and dread coming from?

• Well, here is the bigger picture:
• Within these days I also had to schedule IEP meetings for Annual Reviews and results for evaluations,
• I had to find time to make up for those sessions I missed, as well as some compensatory services for new students, which added up to over 17 hours to squeeze in
• My Fridays looked great, but originally, they were to be strictly half days, not full days
• Reports and paperwork were being done after therapy session, so work actually wrapped up around 530pm
• Lunch hours were usually cut short from billing and paperwork

When we look at this picture with a little more perspective and a much bigger view of what is actually going on, we can start to see exactly where the stress and overwhelm were coming from. There was a clear lack of time for all of the work and an imbalance between what I was doing and what I needed from my day. It is no wonder I always felt like I was having to set projects and ideas aside, or risk not following through with them. It made me feel like I was being pulled in all directions, but never really able to follow any of them. Basically, I had lost my footing, become ungrounded, and was no longer mindful and present to my day to day routine. I was just pushing through until I reached the finish line and could collapse, exhausted, into Summer.

Most of us will do this, year after year, and find some time over the Summer to not think about work, enjoy time with our family and friends, and perhaps dabble in a hobby or two, maybe even travel or just relax poolside. The thing that very few of us do is take action to start to manage the stress better, so we can enjoy the entire year of our life, not just the portion that we aren’t working during. Instead of making some changes in to our current job situation and stress, we instead just ignore it for a few months and hope that the next year will be better, different and much less stressful. We do this year after year, sometimes becoming more and more stressed each year, still clinging to the hope that the next year will be different.

But has it ever worked? Not if you are still stressed out.

It is true that our jobs can become more restrictive and demanding each year, with a higher focus on productivity and paperwork. It is also true that our stress can build because we never really managed it or released it in the first place. After feeling so incredibly stressed this year, my first thought was to run, never look back and find a new job outside of the field. But then I dug a little deeper, realized this wasn’t a solid plan, and instead looked at ways I could change what I did this year for the upcoming year.

• I plan to focus more on mindfulness in my life, but also in my therapy sessions
• I can be more conscious of the students and clients I work with
• I can plan my schedule differently
• I will learn to say “no” more often

These are just a few small shifts I plan to incorporate once the year starts again. It helps me see how I can adjust my work to make it more inline with my own lifestyle and values. Just thinking about making these shifts already has the stress lifting and the excitement for the upcoming year building. The dread is gone (for now) and hope is replacing it.

I know that I tend to have more freedom in my scheduling than many others, but it is still something you can look into as well.

• Grab a journal and find a quiet place to sit and think
• Reflect and write about what really made your work stressful this year
• Where is your work out of balance with your life
• What changes to you wish to see next year
• How can you start to implement those changes in the upcoming year
• How does this idea of more balance and less tress make you feel

If you are looking to dive even deeper into your stress, the triggers for it and what you can do to reduce and manage it, I invite you to join me, and fellow SLPs, for “SLP Stress Management” virtual coaching program, running this Summer.  Each week, we will conference together to discuss ways to manage stress and how to use them in your life, as well as answer some of the big questions that come up when you try to put them into practice.

What does this look like:

• Finding ways to recharge that actually improve your energy
• Cutting out some of the mindlessness from your day, so you are more effective and more present
• Figuring out what is draining your energy during the day
• Managing stress in ways that actually work and improve your overall well-being

Here is rundown of this 6-Week Live virtual program:

• Week 1: Introduction to stress and stress management
• Week 2: Mindfulness and Self-Care
• Week 3: Fueling your work day
• Break for 4th of July
• Week 4: What is your body telling you
• Week 5: What are your thoughts telling you
• Week 6: Putting it all together

The program starts tomorrow (June 13th) and runs through the end of July, taking the week of the 4th off. We will meet at 8pm EST each Wednesday for 1 hour. You’ll also receive a downloadable workbook before hand will some recipes and exercises (mental and physical) to help you get started and continue the work. We will also set up a private FB group for those participating, and you will receive recording of each call in case you are unable to attend a session live (although live is always better).

If you have any questions about the program, or would like to sign up, please visit the sign up page here: SLP Stress Management or you can email jessi@jessiandricks.com

Let’s not spend another year just waiting for the Summer. Let’s move out of survival mode and into Thriving all year long.

Much Love,